My Travel Diary: 12 hours in Madrid

What do you do when you only have 12 hours in Madrid? You eat, of course!

But before we get to that, let me explain why we only had less than 24 hours in Madrid. This is so embarrassing, but well, I might as well admit it: I made the worst mistake and counted the dates wrong! So when counting the number of days per country, I didn’t include our travel time. I seriously thought we had about three days in Madrid. And when I found out about the mistake it was too late–I had already booked all our tickets and Airbnb apartments. Oh well. Hopefully I’ve learned my lesson right? And maybe not plan the entire trip myself. Anyway, we had fun and enjoyed Madrid more since we had very limited time to explore it.

So, okay, before we went off to explore the city, let me share that because of this mistake of mine, we decided to book an Airbnb flat near the airport (since our flight was early in the morning). The airport was about 40 minutes away from the city centre so we really had to make the most of this city tour. The good thing about this Airbnb was our hosts were the nicest people, and were so helpful as to where to go and what to do with our short time in Madrid. Oh, and we arrived in Madrid at 4pm, so we had to hurry!

We took an Uber to Plaza Mayor, and walked all around the city. Of course, another genius move was that I forgot to charge our camera. So I only had my iPhone to take photos with, and I couldn’t really take so many photos and videos because I had to conserve our battery to be able to get an Uber back to our Airbnb flat. These were our only photos in Madrid haha, but it was such a memorable trip because we were in a mad rush to see as many places as we could and eat as many amazing dishes as possible.

First stop: Puerta del Sol, which is one of the best known and busiest places in the city. When we went though, there wasn’t so many people. Love the gorgeous architecture.

At the public square where there was an equine statue of King Carlos III.

Pretty flowers everywhere.

These buildings are just stunning. I couldn’t help but imagine what its like to live in one of these buildings.

A few minutes walk was the Cathedral de la Almudena, which my mom wanted to see. It was well-past its closing time when we went so we didn’t see how it looked inside.

Beautiful cathedral.

That sunset was just amazing. The colors were so vibrant that day.

We were craving for CHURROS (how can we not have it while in Madrid), so we walked to find Chocolateria San Gines, which was on my Google Maps. We didn’t find it, but we found Mercado de San Miguel, which was even better!

If you want variety, and if you want to eat well, YOU HAVE TO GO HERE! Mercado de San Miguel is a covered market that was originally built in 1916. It is a gourmet tapas market, with over 30 different vendors selling a wide variety of freshly prepared tapas, hams, olives, baked goods and other amazing food. Oh, and you can totally have your beer/wine/champagne fix here!

When it Madrid. We had to have paella.

I am saddened by how little photos I have of this day, because we had a feast! Oh well, come to think of it we might have enjoyed more because I wasn’t so engrossed with photographing everything. But hey, we had churros! We shared eight orders between four people!!! <3 Hope to be back soon, Madrid!

  1. Marivie Duran Reply

    You still had wonderful photos Kelly! Hope to visit Madrid soon 🙂

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